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The Swiss Family Treehouse opened November 18, 1962, in Adventureland at Disneyland,[1] two years after the Disney film Swiss Family Robinson (1960). Imagineer Bill Martin worked out the treehouse's design;[2][a] Disney animator Wolfgang Reitherman, who designed the treehouse for the movie, contributed.[4] At 70 feet (21 m) tall and 80 ft (24 m) wide, constructed of concrete and reinforced steel, the attraction weighed 150 tons.[2]John Mills, who played Father Robinson in the movie, and his daughter Hayley appeared at the attraction's opening.[5] The attraction was a walk-through rather than a ride, in which visitors walked up steps in the trunk of the tree through various "rooms" designed on the theme of the movie, with items and structures made to appear salvaged from a 19th-century shipwreck and desert island finds. When it opened, the attraction required a C ticket.[6] The attraction originally opened with reddish brown leaves. However, the red leaves faded very easily in the sun and were eventually switched to green leaves sometime during the early 1960s.

In March 1999, the original attraction at Disneyland was closed. Refurbished and remodeled on a new theme, it reopened in June the same year as Tarzan's Treehouse. When the Magic Kingdom opened at Walt Disney World Resort on October 1, 1971, the Swiss Family Treehouse was one of the original attractions of Adventureland. The tree, while intended to look real, is actually made up of steel, concrete, and stucco, stretching 60 feet (18 m) tall and 90 feet (27 m) wide. Similarly, when Euro Disneyland (now Disneyland Park) opened on April 12, 1992, it featured a version of the attraction located in Adventureland, named La Cabane des Robinson. Tokyo Disneyland also has a Swiss Family Treehouse which opened in 1993, ten years after the park's debut.